Pascal Lafrancois delivered the final blow in the deciding match of the best-of-eleven contest, defeating Brian Rast heads-up.

The team of Xuan Liu, Mike McDonald, Martin Jacobson, Pascal Lefrancois, Jason Lavallee and player/manager Marc-Andre Ladouceur now share the first prize of $100,000, as well as having the honour of being the first team ever to win this series.

What now for the GPL?

The Global Poker League has been an interesting experiment for poker which has attempted to bring in the sporting elements of team sports while embracing eSports events and Twitch streaming.

The series started off positively with the online portion as we got to see the best players in the world face off in contests we probably wouldn't have otherwise seen, which led to some genuinely fascinating matches.

However, interest did appear to wane towards the end of the series as the teams moved towards the live portion of the league. The viewing figures this week on Twitch were getting beaten by low stakes poker streamers. Earlier in the season the GPL moved their finale from Wembley Arena to Las Vegas very quickly.

The GPL players are certainly very enthusiastic about it and they now have PokerStars as a partner. It will be interesting to see what changes, if any, the Global Poker League will make for Season 2.

You can watch the entire final day below:

Did you enjoy the Global Poker League? What parts worked and what parts didn't? Let us know in the comments:

Barry Carter

Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2.